The Lycan's Broken Moon

Trade for alliance

Seraphina POV

The park was three blocks away, but I didn't remember getting there. My body moved on autopilot. My legs carried me past familiar streets that suddenly felt foreign. I passed pack members who stared and whispered because they could smell grief like blood.

I found the bench near the pond. our bench, where Logan had kissed me for the first time, where he had sworn he would never hurt me and I screamed.

The sound tore out of me, raw and animal, everything I couldn't be. I screamed until my throat bled. Until my vision blurred. Until the sun dipped below the trees and the cold set into my bones.

I screamed for my mother, dead three years and never coming back. I screamed for the girl I had been at thirteen, who still believed in love. I screamed for the empty space inside me where a wolf should have been. where something should have been. Where anything should have been to warn me that the only person who loved me had been f*****g my sister.

When the tears finally stopped, I was empty. Hollowed out. A girl-shaped hole in the world.

The pack house was worse when I returned.

They knew. Of course they knew. In a pack, nothing stayed secret, especially not humiliation. The whispers followed me through the foyer. Through the kitchen, up the stairs to my room that was really a closet with a window.

Wolfless.

Pathetic.

Even her sister's leftovers are too good for her.

I kept my head down. Keep walking. I kept breathing because my body didn't care that my heart had stopped.

My father found me in the hallway. Marcus Blackwood, Alpha of the Shadow Vale Pack, looked at his daughter . With the same expression he always wore. mild annoyance, like I was a bill he had forgotten to pay.

"You're back," he said. Not a happy birthday. Not are you okay? , just…. acknowledgement. "I need coffee. My office. Ten minutes."

Then he walked away, expecting obedience.

I stood in the hallway, shaking, and almost laughed. Almost. But laughing required having something left, and Logan had taken even that.

The kitchen was warm, empty. I started the coffee maker with mechanical precision. I measured the grounds and poured water. Then watched the dark liquid drip into the carafe like it mattered. Like anything mattered.

"Well, well."

Lilith's voice slid over me like oil. My sister leaned in the doorway, wearing Logan's shirt. Her blonde hair tangled, her cheek marked with a scar I didn't remember seeing before. It was thin and white, like a crescent moon.

"Did you enjoy the show?" Lilith asked, sauntering closer. "I tried to make it special for you. Five years of buildup deserves a good finale, don't you think?"

I didn't answer. My hands shook as I poured coffee into my father's favorite mug.

"You know," Lilith continued, circling like a shark, "Mom always said I had to protect you. Lilith, look after your little sister. Lilith, she's fragile. Lilith, she needs you." She mimicked our mother's voice, twisted it into something ugly. "Do you know what it's like to be invisible? To watch her pour everything into you while I got scraps?"

"She loved you," I whispered. It was all I had left.

"She loved you," Lilith snapped. Then she smiled, all teeth. "But she's dead now. And I am the one Logan chose. I am the one Father listens to. And I am the one who matters."

She knocked the tray.

I saw it happen in slow motion. The tilt of her hip, the casual brush of her hand, the way the scalding coffee arced through the air and found my hands. The ceramic shattered. The heat screamed. I stumbled back, cradling my burned palm, and felt the broken edge of the mug slice into my other hand.

Blood dripped onto the tile. Coffee pooled around my feet.

"Oops," Lilith said, not sounding sorry at all. "Clumsy me."

She walked out, humming, leaving me alone with the pain and the mess. Also, the crushing weight of a life that had never been mine to keep.

I sank to the floor. The cuts on my palm throbbed. The burn on my hand pulsed. I curled around myself, forehead to knees, and let the tears come again. It was quiet this time. It was an exhausted weeping of someone who had learned that crying loud never helped.

My fingers found the necklace. The only thing my mother had left me, hidden under my shirt where my father couldn't take it. A simple silver chain with a crescent moon pendant, warm from my skin.

Follow your heart, my little moon, my mother had whispered, three days before the cancer took her. And never cry for those who don't deserve your tears.

"I'm trying, Mama," I breathed into the silence. "I'm trying."

Hello.

The voice came from inside me. Soft, feminine, ancient as starlight.

I went still. "What-"

I waited so long, the voice whispered, and something stirred in the empty space behind my ribs. Something white and wild and alive. My name is Aurora. And you, my darling girl, are not alone.

The pain in my hands vanished. I looked down and watched with my mouth open. As the burns faded and the cuts closed. leaving only smooth skin and the faint shimmer of something impossible.

Hide me, Aurora urged, urgent now. They cannot know. Not yet. Not until you're safe. Follow your heart, Seraphina. Run.

Then silence. Deep and complete.

I stood on shaking legs. I looked at my healed hands, at the broken mug, at the kitchen that had never been a home. I thought of my father's office, of whatever new humiliation waited there. Logan's hands on my sister's skin and the way he had looked at me like I was nothing.

I made fresh coffee. I walked to his office door.

And through the woods, I heard my sister's voice.

"The Lycan King needs a bride," Lilith was saying. "Father, she's useless to us. Wolfless, pathetic, broken. But the Lycans don't know that. We could trade her for the alliance. Secure our borders."

"She's my daughter," my father said, but his voice was tired, not angry.

"She's a burden," Lilith countered. "The Lycan King is cruel, they say. He would break her in a week. But the treaty-"

"Logan?" My father's voice, questioning.

A pause. Then Logan's voice, distant, guilty: "It would... solve things. For the pack."

I stood in the hallway, coffee tray trembling in my hands, and waited for my father to refuse. Waited for him to say no, she's my child, I won't sell her like cattle.

"Fine," Marcus Blackwood said. "Lilith, you tell her. Make her understand it's for the good of the pack."

I set the tray down. Quiet. Precise.

For the second time that morning, I ran.